Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Think about it?

"We're just a matter of weeks away from polling day, and the number of people who see the EU as the most important issue facing Britain is at rock-bottom."

This is the complaint of a blog called Think about it, which happily describes itself as:

A dynamic community of bloggers, journalists and journalism students, a forum alive with debate and discussion, a creative portal to inspire youth involvement with the 2009 Parliamentary Elections, brought to you by the European Journalism Centre (EJC).

The graph is from Ipsos MORI and the blog offers a number of reasons why interest should be so low. But the one thing it does not give us is perhaps the real reason – that the EU and anything to do with it is so utterly tedious, so low-grade, so mind-sappingly dull and devoid of vitality that the only sensible response is to wish it would crawl under a stone and die.

Meanwhile, if I hadn't heard it myself, live, direct on a feed from Sky News as I was preparing to do a live interview with them - the satellite van parked outside, much to the puzzlement of the neighbours – I would not have believed it.

"On 4 June, vote for change … vote Conservative", said Mr Cameron. Change what, pray? The number of Tory MEPs we send to Brussels to collect their pay cheques?

What other changes did he have in mind? Did he have the local elections in mind, where he wants the vote to be a referendum on Mr Brown? "In this Party, we believe in localism," says the Boy.

But where is the "localism", where you are supposed to vote for local councillors to represent you on local issues? What price local democracy when the Boy wants to use the local elections to "give this weak, useless and spineless [national] Government a message it won't forget"?

And don't even start me on "vote for change" as a slogan. I know the Boy is keen on recycling, but isn't that carrying it a bit far? Is that the best the geniuses at CCHQ can come up with?